Maha is still weird as hell when it comes to fertility

Home to Moms.govthe Trump administrationThe recently launched website for ‘new and expecting mothers’ is a website Business wifedream.

Featuring soft pastel graphics and a photo of a young, white, blonde woman in a field holding her pregnant belly, the site offers resources for women of childbearing age such as anti-abortion “pregnancy centers,” as well as a CDC website that lists potential options. Workplace risks For pregnant mothers without noticing the accompanying legal protections for pregnant women.

If you have conspiratorial thinking, you might infer from the website alone that the Trump administration is advocating for young (white and blonde) women to have as many (white and blonde) children as possible. But as it turns out, you don’t need to have a conspiratorial mindset at all to come to that conclusion, because the president and top health officials on Monday reiterated their tough stance. Pro-natalist agenda At a maternal health care event.

During the event, Trump announced a proposal for employers to offer the option of health care coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other fertility treatments, which are not currently included in most insurance plans. Although the plan would not require employers to offer such coverage, Trump said he has invested heavily in expanding fertility options for women, declaring that he has “learned everything” about female reproductive health and that he is the “Father of Fertility.”

This wasn’t even the scariest quote to emerge from this event. That honor goes to the Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. kennedy jrWho declared that the country is going through a fertility crisis that poses a “threat to our national economy and security.” As evidence, he cited factors such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides, and other potential contributors to hormonal imbalances that cause infertility, discrediting “the toxic soup in which our young women wander.”

But it wasn’t just women who were blamed: He also cited the statistic that men in 1970 had “twice as many sperm as teenagers today,” referring to it as “an existential crisis for our country.”

In response to questions about Kennedy’s apparent focus on teen sperm, White House spokesman Khush Desai told WIRED: “Changing America’s birth rates requires systemic change. The Trump administration is sparing no effort to address this challenge, from researching long-ignored chronic health issues that affect fertility, to pushing policies that will improve child care, health care, and housing affordability.”

Sperm claim, which Kennedy repeated Several times Throughout his tenure in the administration, he has largely been in line with Make America healthy again The movement’s focus is on masculinity, with the Department of Health and Human Services regularly involved Promotion of testosterone treatments And RFK Jr. They promote fitness videos Same with Kid Rock. But the science is highly questionable, says Ashley Wiltshire, a fertility specialist at Columbia University’s Fertility Center, noting that the research on which this claim is ostensibly based has been “debunked” by more contemporary studies. A Meta-analysis The study, published last year in the journal Fertility and Sterility, found that sperm counts among men did not decline between 1970 and 2023, but remained relatively stable over time.

Although Wiltshire points out that male infertility was indeed on the rise globally (not just in the United States), the specific reasons for this decline remain unclear, and they do not appear to be directly related to the sperm count study that Kennedy mentioned. “We don’t have the evidence to say” that American men are experiencing an “existential” fertility crisis, Wiltshire says.

Not to be outdone, Mehmet Oz, head of the administration’s Medicare and Medicaid divisions, said at the event that one in three Americans are “child-less,” meaning they “don’t have any children,” or “have fewer children than you would normally like to have.” This trend contributes to declining fertility and replacement rates in the United States, which could contribute to long-term economic instability, he said. It is true that fertility rates in the United States are declining, as the United States has reached a low level Low register In 2024 women will give birth to an average of 1.6 children throughout their lives. But the birth rate still exceeds the death rate in the United States (unlike countries like Japan, which are already experiencing… prominent Population decline crisis), and we are currently witnessing declining birth rates in most major industrialized countries.